Don Quixote

faintheartedness!"
{PART_ONE|CHAPTER_IX ^paragraph 20}
Levin rose to his feet, took off his overcoat, and, gaining speed
over the rough ice round the pavilion, came out on the smooth ice
and skated without effort, as it were, by, simple exercise of will,
increasing and slackening speed and turning his course. He
approached her with timidity, but again her smile reassured him.
She gave him her hand, and they set off side by side, going faster
and faster, and the more rapidly they moved the more tightly she
grasped his hand.
"With you I should soon learn; I somehow feel confidence in you,"
she said to him.
"And I have confidence in myself when you are leaning on me," he
said, but was at once frightened at what he had said, and blushed. And
indeed, no sooner had he uttered these words, than all at once, like
the sun going behind a cloud, her face lost all its tenderness, and
Levin detected the familiar change in her expression that denoted
mental concentration; a tiny wrinkle came upon her smooth brow.
"Is there anything troubling you? However, I've no right to ask such
a question," he said hurriedly.
{PART_ONE|CHAPTER_IX ^paragraph 25}
"Oh, why so?... No, I have nothing to trouble me," she responded
coldly, and immediately added: "You haven't seen Mlle. Linon, have
you?"
"Not yet."
"Go and speak to her- she likes you so much."
"What's wrong? I have offended her. Lord help me!" thought Levin,
and he flew towards the old Frenchwoman with the gray ringlets, who
was sitting on a bench. Smiling and showing her false teeth, she
greeted him as an old friend.
"Yes, you see we're growing up," she said to him, glancing toward
Kitty, "and growing old. Tiny bear has grown big now!" pursued the
Frenchwoman, laughing, and she reminded him of his joke about the
three young ladies whom he had compared to the three bears in the
English nursery tale. "Do you remember that's what you used to call
them?"
{PART_ONE|CHAPTER_IX ^paragraph 30}
He remembered absolutely nothing, but she had been laughing at the
joke for ten years now and was fond of it.
"Now, go and skate, go and skate. Our Kitty has learned to skate
nicely, hasn't she?"
When Levin darted up to Kitty her face was no longer stern; her eyes
looked at him with the same sincerity and tenderness, but Levin
fancied that in her tenderness there was a certain note of
deliberate composure. And he felt depressed. After talking a little of
her old governess and her peculiarities, she questioned him about
his life.
"Surely, you must feel dull in the country in the winter," she said.
"No, I'm not dull- I am very busy," he said, feeling that she was
making him submit to her composed tone, which he would not have the
strength to break through- just as had been the case at the
beginning of the winter.
{PART_ONE|CHAPTER_IX ^paragraph 35}
"Are you going to stay in town